Who signed Japan’s Instrument of Surrender first at the Tokyo Bay ceremony?

Mamoru Shigemitsu was the first Japanese representative to sign the Instrument of Surrender.

Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government during the ceremony aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. He was Japan’s foreign minister and wore formal diplomatic attire, including a top hat and morning coat. General Yoshijirō Umezu, representing Japan’s armed forces, signed after him.

General Douglas MacArthur then signed for the Allied powers. Other signatories represented the United States, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. The sequence reflected both governmental and military authority.

Shigemitsu had previously served as Japan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and had held senior diplomatic posts during the war. He was later convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and imprisoned, but he was paroled in 1950 and returned to Japan’s government as foreign minister in the postwar period.